For low-key laughs, come to ‘Mama’

A Review

Click to Enlarge Browse Aspen Times Photos Tina Fey, left, and Amy Poehler in “Baby Mama.” (Universal Pictures)

Bill Zwecker
Universal Press Syndicate
Aspen, CO Colorado
April 25, 2008

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Maybe it’s the approximately 15 years of doing improv sketches together, both in Chicago at Second City and the iO Theater and then more famously on “Saturday Night Live,” that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler share. Or perhaps it’s that other magic the two actresses also display — exquisite comic timing and “chemistry.” It doesn’t hurt that “Baby Mama” also features a well-honed script and some terrific supporting players to round out the picture.

Put it all together, and you have one of the funniest movies to be released so far this year.

While “Baby Mama” will be quickly perceived as a “chick flick” or a “girls-night-out” moviegoing experience (the title alone makes that pretty obvious), let’s hope that a lot of men, especially married ones or those in committed relationships, go to see this film. For while it is hilariously funny, “Baby Mama” also makes some poignant statements about the nature of romantic relationships, the desire to parent and the whole concept of nurturing.

Fey plays Kate Holbrook, an intelligent and creative, hard-driving single career woman who finds herself at age 37 increasingly anxious to become a mother. For years, she never gave the idea of having kids much thought as she concentrated on moving up the corporate ladder. Now, as vice president of a successful chain of health-food grocery stores (named Round Earth, an obvious homage to Whole Foods), she’s been handed her company’s latest challenge — sole responsibility for opening a new store in a gentrifying Philadelphia neighborhood.

After disappointing attempts to become pregnant via artificial insemination, Kate considers the adoption route, where she quickly learns she’s low on the totem pole. Even today, financially secure, emotionally stable single women find it can be difficult to adopt an American child through traditional agency procedures. She ends up on the doorstep of Sigourney Weaver’s very expensive (Hello! Try $100,000!) agency that provides “foolproof” connections with highly screened surrogates — women who will, for a fee, carry an infertile woman’s child to full term.

The comedy takes a wonderful turn when Kate discovers she’s paired with Angie (Poehler), a girl from what used to be called the “wrong side of the tracks,” who has been talked into this whole surrogate thing by her boyfriend, Carl (Dax Shepard). He’s a n’er-do-well get-rich-quick kind of guy who refers to himself as Angie’s “common-law” husband.

Kate and Angie come from such different worlds, yet despite any number of issues (including one big one, which I won’t give away), they bond in a bizarre but charming and sweet way. After a fight with Carl, Angie moves into Kate’s upscale digs — and then the fun really begins.

Fey and Poehler are absolutely perfect in their roles, with Fey superbly understated (as she usually is) as the “straight woman” reacting to Poehler’s absurdity.

The fun-filled yet poignant romp that is “Baby Mama” is a winner from start to finish.

“Baby Mama” — Universal Pictures presents a film written and directed by Michael McCullers. Produced by Lorne Michaels. Running time: 96 minutes. Classified: PG-13 (for crude and sexual humor, language and a drug reference). Rated: Three and a half stars.

SECOND OPINION
Ann Hornaday
The Washington Post
“Baby Mama” isn’t exactly laugh-out-loud funny. It’s more quiet-chuckle funny, which is fine, too. This latest addition to the pregnancy comedy trend, starring Tina Fey as an overachieving corporate vice president who hires a working-class party girl (Amy Poehler) to be a surrogate mother, ambles along with such low-key, easygoing humor that it’s almost a shock to the system: Where are the hamburger phones, the rat-a-tat pop culture references, the porn? All have been left behind in the service of what is a far more observant, if uneven, comedy of 21st-century manners.

An unforced warmth suffuses the film and makes it such a welcome alternative to the desperation and self-loathing of the Judd Apatow canon or the compulsive verbosity of “Juno.” (Which isn’t to say that “Baby Mama” doesn’t feature its share of raunch: There are plenty of jokes involving sex, childbirth and various lady parts.) For those who crave mannerisms and shtick and like their jokes set up and knocked out with plenty of arrows and quote marks, “Baby Mama” may fall flat. But audiences alive to the modest charms of its take on female friendship will be rewarded with at least a few quiet chuckles.